[ask]nvdia or ati

which one is better nvdia geforce 9800gx2 or ati x3870 x2

whats your budget and what system are you putting this into?

my budget is enough to gx2....

core 2quad q9450a
gigabyte x48tdq6
ddr3 2gb corsair 1333

i'm already buy this stuff exepct vga card....
oh..... i'm so confused to pick a vga card

well its irrelevant which card is faster since they are not really direct competitors. The 3870x2 sits in the $400 range, and was released to do what the 3870 couldn't, and thats compete with the 8800GTX/Ultra. It does a wonderful job at that, but the 9800GX2 was released so Nvidia could maintain its performance crown..and as such its the fastest single video card you can buy today. It may stay that way for a few months, maybe a bit longer, but dual card solutions have always been a stop gap for Nvidia. The 7950GX2 doubled up on the G71, but was destroyed by G80. And the same thing is likely to happen with the 9800GX2. As soon as Nvidia is ready to release their new architecture later this year (the 9800 series are G92 based) odds are quite good it will surpass the 9800GX2 with ease.

ATI has taken the dual card solution much more seriously and as such the 3870X2 is a much more polished card. The card is much easier to make, the design of the PCB is far less complex, and the cooling system is about as simple and effective as you can get. The drivers are where ATI is really putting the effort in, and crossfire is improving by solid numbers with every release, the last few releases have given some games up to a 40% boost in performance over previous drivers. Not to mention, given the price of the 9800GX2 you can get a 3870X2 and a 3870 and run your own triple crossfire and achieve very similar performance, if not greater in some cases.

The 9800GX2 is the fastest card you can get today, but by no means does that make the 3870X2 a bad card.

But the real question for a set up such as yours is monitor size. If your running anything less than a 24" LCD at 1920x1200 you are wasting your money. Pairing such powerful gpus with low resolutions like 1280x1024 is just a waste of money because the gpus will never get to stretch their legs and its likely to just bottleneck things up for you. Even for 1680x1050 you'll be just fine with a single 3870 or 8800GT/GTS 512. Ideally these cards are best suited to the 30" 2560x1600 panels of today.

thank's for the information...yeah i'm affraid......because 9800gx2 seems not good enough if we compare with the price....to expensive...

stang choose one 9600gt sli or 3870 x2

The 9600GT SLI would be good competition, and in fact they pretty much trade back and forth between who wins what benchmarks. I guess it comes down to what games you play, and at what resolutions you play them. 1600x1200 for example can be faster on the 9600GT SLI, while 1920x1200 or higher will be faster on the 3870X2.

Firing Squad did a nice review, found here that compares the 3870X2 and the 9600GT SLI. The review is pretty recent so the drivers are somewhat up to date, but the testing was done with the 8.2 drivers, and the 8.3 release drivers improved performance in Crysis DX10 by 15%, Company of Heros DX10 by 17%, and Lost Planet DX9 performance went up nearly 40%. So that is DEFINITELY something to keep in mind.

Personally I would go with the 3870X2 as it is still a single card solution and still expandable (either by adding a 3870 for triple crossfire, or a second 3870X2 for quad crossfire) and definitely to gain the GPGPU power of the 3870x2 to use with the new Folding at Home client.

All in all your fine going with either option, power consumption on the 9600GT SLI should be a bit lower, but noise levels could be higher depending on what model 9600GT you use. So again...take note of what games you play and what resolutions you play them at because that will make a BIG difference in the performance and scaling of both solutions.

not to get too technical or anything but:

ATI!!!


i only say this because the whole spider system really kicks intels stuff in the digital junk.

thank's stang.....one more question..... the min res for sli